When the right hand of 61-year-old Joe Gatt started shaking uncontrollably five years ago, he thought nothing of it.
Joe tells me to go out but I don’t because I’ll be worried about him all the time
However, his colleagues at worked urged him to see a doctor after they noticed his shake was not a passing phase.
“He told me I had Parkinson’s disease and that was it,” he said yesterday.
The news was broken to the Gatts and their two children, leaving the whole family shocked.
His wife Margaret was taken aback by the diagnosis, especially because they were ignorant about the disease.
“The good thing about it is that it’s a gradual disease and, in the beginning, all he had was trembling so we learnt more about it.”
Mr Gatt, from Mosta, was immediately put on medication to control the condition and five years down the line, he is coping.
“The most important thing is to accept it – it’s not nice but there is nothing you can do. Every morning when I wake up, I look up and thank the Lord for all I have,” he said with a smile.
Mr Gatt is one of 1,400 people in Malta who suffer from Parkinson’s disease – a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system which includes shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty with walking.
The disease eats away at a person’s independence, often preventing them from carrying out simple tasks such as dressing, eating, washing or running errands.
Now retired, Mr Gatt takes it in his stride. “I take my first pill in the morning at around 6.30 a.m. and I know that at around 8.30 a.m. I will be OK.”
But he also knows there are times in the day when he finds it difficult to do anything.
His wife said: “We don’t live day by day, but hour by hour – according to how he feels”. When the shaking and tremors set in, Mr Gatt watches television or browses the internet. Describing her husband as a “positive person”, Mrs Gatt admits she would not be as positive as him if they swapped places. “Things are changing – he is slowing down. Before it used to take him 15 minutes to do a job around the house and now it takes him much longer.”
The disease also impacted their social life, making outings less frequent with fewer commitments.
“Joe tells me to go out but I don’t because I’ll be worried about him all the time. He knows that and tells me that I don’t go out because of him… but I don’t tell him these things because I don’t want him to feel burdened,” she said.
The Gatts are aware of the lack of awareness about the disease and that many people who “didn’t know what to do” when faced with people suffering from Parkinson’s.
The couple resorted to help from the Malta Parkinson’s Disease Association, which yesterday launched a detailed information booklet about the disease in Maltese.
Mr Gatt appealed to people diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease not to give up hope and to join the association where they would receive support and meet others in the same situation.